Freedom To Read (Adult)

Freedom to Read Week is an annual event that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom.

Despite having strong traditions of free expression and free inquiry, Canada also has a long-standing tradition of censorship. Historically, books and magazines have often been quietly removed from libraries and classrooms. Freedom to Read Week was founded in 1984 to challenge the covert nature of censorship, creating a broader awareness of these ongoing challenges to Canadian writing. It also encourages Canadians to actively defend their right to publish, read and write freely and to widen their understanding of the negative effects of censorship, not just on readers but on writers and publishers as well. Over the years, Freedom to Read Week has become a regular feature of the annual programming of schools, libraries and literary groups across Canada.

Updated December 30, 2025
L
Lambton County Library February Recommended Reading
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Freedom To Read (Adult)

Freedom to Read Week is an annual event that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom.

Despite having strong traditions of free expression and free inquiry, Canada also has a long-standing tradition of censorship. Historically, books and magazines have often been quietly removed from libraries and classrooms. Freedom to Read Week was founded in 1984 to challenge the covert nature of censorship, creating a broader awareness of these ongoing challenges to Canadian writing. It also encourages Canadians to actively defend their right to publish, read and write freely and to widen their understanding of the negative effects of censorship, not just on readers but on writers and publishers as well. Over the years, Freedom to Read Week has become a regular feature of the annual programming of schools, libraries and literary groups across Canada.

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The Communist manifesto : a modern edition
Marx, Karl
Paper Book
The Communist Manifesto,is the most influential political call-to-arms ever written. In the century and a half since its publication the world has been shaken repeatedly by those who sought to make its declamations a reality. But the focus of this modern edition is not primarily...

Reason for challenge: political ideology

Fight Club : A Novel
Palahniuk, Chuck.
Paper Book
Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation's most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basements of...

Reason for challenge: violent content, anti-social behaviour

The handmaid's tale
Atwood, Margaret Eleanor
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from "the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction" (The New York Times) * The sixth and final season of the award-winning Hulu series starring Elisabeth Moss is now streaming ...

Reason for challenge: violence, offensive language

Beyond order 12 more rules for life
Paper Book
The companion volume to 12 Rules for Life offers further guidance on the perilous path of modern life.    In 12 Rules for Life, clinical psychologist and celebrated professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto Dr. Jordan B. ...

Reason for challenge: political ideology

The Love Hypothesis
Hazelwood, Ali
Paper Book
The Instant New York Times Bestseller and TikTok Sensation! When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos. As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive...

Reason for challenge: scientific inaccuracies, sexual content

Fun home : a family tragicomic
Bechdel, Alison
Paper Book
A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic...

Reason for challenge: LGBTQ+, sexual content

Happy place
Henry, Emily.
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ∙ A couple who broke up months ago pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry. "The beach-read master...

Reason for challenge: sexual content

A clockwork orange
Burgess, Anthony
Paper Book
In Anthony Burgess's influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends' intense reaction against their society....

Reason for challenge: sexual content, violent content, immoral

The bluest eye
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME * From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner--a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace. * With a new introduction by Jacqueline...

Reason for challenge: racism, sexual content, incest

I know why the caged bird sings
Angelou, Maya
Paper Book
Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS's American Masters. Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself....

Reason for challenge: racism, sexual content, LGBTQ+

The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick Winner of the Pulitzer Prize * Winner of the National Book Award   Published to unprecedented acclaim,The Color Purple established Alice Walker as a major voice in...

Reason for challenge: sexual content, LGBTQ+, offensive language, violent content

Carrie
King, Stephen
Paper Book
Now a major motion picture starring Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore. Stephen King's legendary debut, about a teenage outcast and the revenge she enacts on her classmates.   Carrie White may be picked on by her classmates, but she has a gift. She can move things with her...

Reason for challenge: violent content, depiction of religion

Lolita
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich
Paper Book
Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as a classic not to the controversy its subject matter aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness. With an introduction by Martin Amis. When it was...

Reason for challenge: obscene

The satanic verses : a novel
Rushdie, Salman.
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths."--Newsday ...

Reason for challenge: blasphemous

Snow falling on cedars
Guterson, David.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * PEN/Faulkner Award Winner *  A gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric masterpiece of courtroom suspense--one that leaves us shaken and changed.  "Haunting .... A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at...

Reason for challenge: sexual content

Flowers for Algernon
Keyes, Daniel.
Paper Book
Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, this powerful, classic science fiction story is about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache. Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ,...

Reason for challenge: offensive language

Brave new world
Huxley, Aldous.
Paper Book
Now more than ever: Aldous Huxley's enduring masterwork must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit "A masterpiece. . . . One of the most prophetic dystopian works." --Wall Street Journal  Aldous Huxley's...

Reason for challenge: sexual content, offensive language, anti-family themes, anti-religious themes

Someone knows my name
Hill, Lawrence
Paper Book
Abducted from Africa as a child and enslaved in South Carolina, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom--and of the knowledge she needs to get home. Sold to an indigo trader who recognizes her intelligence, Aminata is torn from her husband and child and thrown into the chaos of the Revolutionary War....

Reason for challenge: offensive language

Maus : a survivor's tale
Spiegelman, Art.
Paper Book
The definitive edition of the graphic novel acclaimed as "the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust" (Wall Street Journal) and "the first masterpiece in comic book history" (The New Yorker) * PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * One of Variety's "Banned and...

Reason for challenge: depiction of Nazi symbols

Fahrenheit 451 : the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns ...
Bradbury, Ray
Paper Book
For use in schools and libraries only. A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit.

Reason for challenge: offensive language, violent content, religious and political ideology

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